Real Word Example

Now let’s enable diagnostics on a resource, and see what information and value we can get out of it.

In this example, I’m going to enable diagnostics on a Network Security Group (NSG). In Azure Monitor > Diagnostic Settings, I see my Network Security Group which does not have diagnostics turned on.

When you select a resource that does not yet have diagnostics enabled, it will show you what data will be collected when you enable it. In the case of a Network Security Group, it shows it will collect Events, and Rule Counters.

Azure Monitor – Diagnostics – Enable

When you turn on diagnostics logs, you can choose where those logs will go, and what logs specifically you want.

Azure Monitor – Diagnostics – Settings

Once the diagnostic logs are being collected and sent, this gives you more data to work with for troubleshooting and investigating issues.

OMS – NSG Analytics – Details

Conclusion

Azure Diagnostics really provides a great option for collecting additional details and data about your environment and resources. And in the world of monitoring and troubleshooting, the more data the better.

Why? You may think: Too much data means too much to sift through. But with tools like Azure Monitor, Operations Management Suite (OMS), Azure Security Center (ASC), etc. having all these data points is best.

Let the tools do the heavy lifting in churning through mountains of logs and data. Leverage the power of the behind-the-scenes machine learning and artificial intelligence against these datasets.

By including diagnostics data from your resources, it will help you to correlate issues with your environment.